Related papers: Equal partners do better in defensive alliances
Cyclic dominance between species may yield spiral waves that are known to provide a mechanism enabling persistent species coexistence. This observation holds true even in presence of spatial heterogeneity in the form of quenched disorder.…
We study a set of six-species ecological models where each species has two predators and two preys. On a square lattice the time evolution is governed by iterated invasions between the neighboring predator-prey pairs chosen at random and by…
Intransitivity is a property of connected, oriented graphs representing species interactions that may drive their coexistence even in the presence of competition, the standard example being the three species Rock-Paper-Scissors game. We…
How large ecosystems can create and maintain the remarkable biodiversity we see in nature is probably one of the biggest open questions in science, attracting attention from different fields, from Theoretical Ecology to Mathematics and…
Rock is wrapped by paper, paper is cut by scissors, and scissors are crushed by rock. This simple game is popular among children and adults to decide on trivial disputes that have no obvious winner, but cyclic dominance is also at the heart…
Understanding the emergence and sustainability of cooperation is a fundamental problem in evolutionary biology and is frequently studied by the framework of evolutionary game theory. A very powerful mechanism to promote cooperation is…
We investigate invasions from a biological reservoir to an initially empty, heterogeneous habitat in the presence of advection. The habitat consists of a periodic alternation of favorable and unfavorable patches. In the latter the…
Competitive systems can exhibit both hierarchical (transitive) and cyclic (intransitive) structures. Despite theoretical interest in cyclic competition, which offers richer dynamics, and occupies a larger subset of the space of possible…
A five-species predator-prey model is studied on a square lattice where each species has two prey and two predators on the analogy to the Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock game. The evolution of the spatial distribution of species is…
Cooperation is a difficult proposition in the face of Darwinian selection. Those that defect have an evolutionary advantage over cooperators who should therefore die out. However, spatial structure enables cooperators to survive through the…
Ecosystems are formed by networks of species and their interactions. Traditional models of such interactions assume a constant interaction strength between a given pair of species. However, there is often significant trait variation among…
Biological and social scientists have long been interested in understanding how to reconcile individual and collective interests in iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Many effective strategies have been proposed, and they are often categorized…
The rock-paper-scissors game is a model example of the on-going cyclic turnover typical of many ecosystems, ranging from the terrestrial and aquatic to the microbial. Here we explore the evolution of a rock-paper-scissors system where three…
When group members claim a portion of limited resources, it is tempting to invest more effort to get a larger share. However, if everyone acts similarly, they all get the same piece they would obtain without extra effort. This is the…
Ecology and evolution are inherently linked, and studying a mathematical model that considers both holds promise of insightful discoveries related to the dynamics of cooperation. In the present article, we use the prisoner's dilemma (PD)…
We introduce and study an evolutionary complementarity game where in each round a player of population 1 is paired with a member of population 2. The game is symmetric, and each player tries to obtain an advantageous deal, but when one of…
One strategy for winning a coevolutionary struggle is to evolve rapidly. Most of the literature on host-pathogen coevolution focuses on this phenomenon, and looks for consequent evidence of coevolutionary arms races. An alternative…
Rock-scissors-paper game, as the simplest model of intransitive relation between competing agents, is a frequently quoted model to explain the stable diversity of competitors in the race of surviving. When increasing the number of…
One strategy for winning a coevolutionary struggle is to evolve rapidly. Most of the literature on host-pathogen coevolution focuses on this phenomenon, and looks for consequent evidence of coevolutionary arms races. An alternative…
According to the competitive exclusion principle, in a finite ecosystem, extinction occurs naturally when two or more species compete for the same resources. An important question that arises is: when coexistence is not possible, which…